Brian Plancher, Camelia Brumar, Iulian Brumar, Lillian Pentecost, Saketh Rama, and David Brooks. 9/24/2019. “
Application of Approximate Matrix Multiplication to Neural Networks and Distributed SLAM.” In IEEE High Performance Extreme Computing Conference (HPEC). Waltham, MA, USA.
Publisher's VersionAbstractComputational efficiency is a critical constraint for a variety of cutting-edge real-time applications. In this work, we identify an opportunity to speed up the end-to-end runtime of two such compute bound applications by incorporating approximate linear algebra techniques. Particularly, we apply approximate matrix multiplication to artificial Neural Networks (NNs) for image classification and to the robotics problem of Distributed Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (DSLAM). Expanding upon recent sampling-based Monte Carlo approximation strategies for matrix multiplication, we develop updated theoretical bounds, and an adaptive error prediction strategy. We then apply these techniques in the context of NNs and DSLAM increasing the speed of both applications by 15-20% while maintaining a 97% classification accuracy for NNs running on the MNIST dataset and keeping the average robot position error under 1 meter (vs 0.32 meters for the exact solution). However, both applications experience variance in their results. This suggests that Monte Carlo matrix multiplication may be an effective technique to reduce the memory and computational burden of certain algorithms when used carefully, but more research is needed before these techniques can be widely used in practice.
Application of Approximate Matrix Multiplication to Neural Networks and Distributed SLAM Yu Wang, Victor Lee, Gu Wei, and David Brooks. 1/1/2019. “
Predicting New Workload or CPU Performance by Analyzing Public Datasets.” ACM Transactions on Architecture and Code Optimization (TACO), 15, 4, Pp. 53:1–53:21.
Publisher's VersionAbstractThe marketplace for general-purpose microprocessors offers hundreds of functionally similar models, differing by traits like frequency, core count, cache size, memory bandwidth, and power consumption. Their performance depends not only on microarchitecture, but also on the nature of the workloads being executed. Given a set of intended workloads, the consumer needs both performance and price information to make rational buying decisions. Many benchmark suites have been developed to measure processor performance, and their results for large collections of CPUs are often publicly available. However, repositories of benchmark results are not always helpful when consumers need performance data for new processors or new workloads. Moreover, the aggregate scores for benchmark suites designed to cover a broad spectrum of workload types can be misleading. To address these problems, we have developed a deep neural network (DNN) model, and we have used it to learn the relationship between the specifications of Intel CPUs and their performance on the SPEC CPU2006 and Geekbench 3 benchmark suites. We show that we can generate useful predictions for new processors and new workloads. We also cross-predict the two benchmark suites and compare their performance scores. The results quantify the self-similarity of these suites for the first time in the literature. This work should discourage consumers from basing purchasing decisions exclusively on Geekbench 3, and it should encourage academics to evaluate research using more diverse workloads than the SPEC CPU suites alone.
Predicting New Workload or CPU Performance by Analyzing Public Datasets